Paregoric
by MistressMinako
Summary: Jounouchi comforts Malik after a bad night. Part of the Malik[chan] series. JouPOV. JouxMalik. Complete.


Hey everyone. Apologies for the huge gap between updates - my old laptop met an untimely demise and I lost all my in-progress work and information. While I work on getting it fixed, here's a short interlude describing the typical nightly activities of Malik-chan and Jounouchi.

For those interested, this story is an expansion on the things Malik says directly preceding Battle City, as he is sitting with Rishid in the stadium. Malik confesses that he has great difficulty sleeping; in his words, "No one on Earth fears the dark more than I do/Every night I go to sleep is pure terror". I have simply decided to show the effects of such a disturbed sleep-pattern, though Jounouchi's eyes. I will admit the narration is a little strange, and then tense changes throughout. Let me know if you have any questions, and enjoy.

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He wants to hold her and caress her hair while he sings to her and tells her everything is all right.

He wants to see her smile. He wants to hear her laugh, because _she's_ never slept with anyone. She might feel an illicit thrill as he lies alongside her in her bed. Her siblings stay in their rooms - willfully unaware her door is closed. They try to be silent as skin sides against skin and electric shocks run down his back as he watches her face contract in pleasure. He knows the feelings would be new to her, even if the act is not. She would whimper as his hand brushes over the rise of her breast. Smiling wickedly, he would cup the soft flesh and rub a sensitive nipple. He'd lower his head and drag his tongue over her dark skin as if savoring the finest delicacy. She would gasp and she would cry, but not in the way that always brakes his heart. He would claim her soft lips in a deep kiss, and she would cling to him as if she would drown. He would devote all his attention to her, treating her like the queen...no, _goddess_ she is in his eyes.

He dreams of holding his lover against his chest, of stealing kisses and making her blush even as her nails dig into his arm. He reassures her firmly, hoping his voice reaches her soul and brings her though the cloud of her fear and back to him. He thinks of running his fingers across her slim hips as her body tightens then shakes uncontrollably. He imagines her voice rising in the heat of the night, rather then apologies between sobs.

He bandages a cut on her arm she incurred while thrashing about. The wound is long and bleeds thickly. Her cries are dry now - her body physically exhausted by the torment of the mind that controls it. She keeps her head turned to the side and her eyes tightly shut. Watching her blood drip from torn skin only serves to upset her further, even though she knows her behavior is just an over-reaction. She doesn't look at him again until he lays a hand on her cheek and turns her head gently to face him. Her eyes stay closed until he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. She turns her wounded gaze on him, asking him if she was possessed by god or magic. The pills help her...no, _make_ her sleep. She is ferried to the dark oblivion which the sun is fated to enter every night. There, she passes though the underworld, through a torrent of pain and fear. The nightmares are formless. She cannot hear their voices as they speak. Still they re-enforce a deep fear in the core of her being that has been there as long as she can remember. She longs for the bright sun of the surface world, but she cannot escape the dark tunnels of her dreams.

So she screams whenever a spare breath fills her lungs. Her cries are the only way she knows how to alert her siblings to her peril. The learning curve is steep, but he has come to understand how to react to her affliction. He tries to reach her when she is between the waking world and the world of her dreams. He protects her from harm as best he can when her body is beyond her mind's control.

He turns his attention outside of himself. She is quiet now - her heavy breathing the only sound in the universe of her bedroom. Ghostly patterns play over her face, cast by her night-light and the rain that pours down the window in rivers that are born and die in an instant. She clings to him so tightly that the light part of her hands is made pale by the strength of her grip. She is shaking from the stress of her experience and continuously-compounding sleep debt. He wraps one arm around her firmly as she stars unblinkingly into the world beyond and below her window. She is so entrapped by her experience that she fails to even flinch as he rubs her scarred back. He smiles bitterly to himself. He is the only person on Earth allowed this favor. She snaps at all but him when they dare to contact the tableaux of blood and endless pain carved into her flesh as a boy. He knows so little of her life before that day...that duel with Yuugi where he had first witnessed the extent of her will. However, his ignorance does not stop him from trying to be the best person he can be for her.

He's been doing this for awhile now, coming after school to study in the apartment that belongs to her small family, then staying with her though the night. Ever since their first-second meeting, she had clung to him as she was doing now. At that time, He had been bewildered by her actions. He was then positively mystified (when he had worked up the nerve to let his hands wander a bit) why she had so far no objections as to where his hands rested on her body. If his hands fell on a sensitive area, she would gasp or shiver and sometimes would make little appreciatively sounds. If he caused her pain, she would retaliate swiftly by jerking in his arms, swearing at him in her native language and perhapse physically correcting him. Those instances though, are very rare in occurrence. For the most part, she enjoys his touches. He runs his hands up her body now, pressing a kiss to her neck as he tries to shake her from her shocked state. He threads his fingers in her hair and guides her to lay her head on his shoulder. Her large eyes flutter closed as he presses their bodies together, whispering words of comfort and rubbing her back very, very gently. Her long fingers caresses the small of his back as she wraps her arms around his waist. Her slight body is still shaking uncontrollably; and she apologizes over and over because she knows he has school in a few hours - yet here he is spending his time with her when he should be sleeping. He does his best to assure her that she's more important, and she stops speaking to stare at him with a guilty expression.

He brushes a few stray tears from her cheek and studies her face. Her dark skin and foreign features puzzle the part of his mind used to the faces of Asians. Her skin is smooth and bears no lasting impression of the monster that resides in her mind. Although she was born male, the contours of her face are delicate and round. Only her eyes are shadowed, dark semi-circles that blend with the black tattoos at the corners of her eyes. She whimpers softly and clings to him, her eyes staring out the window into the dark night. He follows her gaze to the dark formless masses that prowl the street below. For half her life, she had lived in nothing but darkness, never experiencing the shift of day to night and back again. Now she lived on the surface world, and far away from her homeland. Still the darkness plagued her, and she was afraid of what the world became at night.

He frees a hand and reaches behind his own body to retrieve a stuffed animal that has become wedged between the wall and the bed. He smiles fondly and presents the item to her. The corners of her mouth turn up in a small smile as he presses the item - a stuffed version of Ra's second form - against her cheek. Slowly, she lifts one hand to gently caress the plush creature, closing her eyes and imaging the sun as he has instructed on so many occasions. The actions are almost a form of meditation for her - a ritual of sorts, to banish the fear that holds sleep just out of her grasp. He threads his free hand though her hair and strokes her comfortingly. Her weight on his chest increases as he watches the tension drain out of her form. She stares at her toy, her eyes half-open and azure eyes gleaming in the light floating up from the street.

He smiles and gently curls her fingers around one of its wings - freeing his hand to brush his fingers over her parted lips. She responds with a soft sound, and brushes her tongue over his fingertips. He groans deeply, part of his mind wondering if she realizes what she's done. Soft lips close over his fingertips as he muses, and she sucks gently on his skin - slowly drawing his fingers into her mouth. Her tongue caresses his fingers gently and he moans softly - the action sending heat straight to his groin. His other hand tightens in her hair as her free arm tightens around his waist, pressing her breasts against his chest. He is both thankful and annoyed by the thin cotton layers that separate their skin. As she lets his fingers slip from her mouth, he wants nothing more then to cup her perfect breasts and tease her to madness. With an iron-clad will, he resists the temptation before him, and instead claims her lips in a gentle kiss. He can feel the heat in her cheeks as he kisses her languidly. Her tongue brushes questioningly against his lips and he groans again. Unable to deny her even this small thrill, he parts his lips and her tongue tangles with his own as they share panting breaths.

After a few eternal seconds, he brakes the kiss and leans back to take in her form. The scars of her nightmares have faded, replaced with a sort of indolent satiation. She smiles up at him shyly and clutches her toy to her chest. He lets her hair slide from his grasp, secretly thrilled by the strange texture of it. He brushes a thumb across her cheek and stretches out on the mattress beside her with a sigh. He tugs on her arm gently, and with a look of mild surprise, she joins him. She closes her shining eyes, and settles against him. They prove to be a tight fit on her single bed, but he doesn't mind holding her against his chest in case the bad dreams return

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As far as I know, stuffed versions of the God Cards don't actually officially exist. Although personally, I would adore a plush Ra. Thank you for your time in reading.


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